Sunday, November 24, 2013

Dear Boston Sports Fans

Dear Boston Sports Fans:Look. We - and by "we", I mean "those of us living in the rest of the country, apart from LA and New York, which have their own particular ridiculousness" - understand. You are in an admirable place right now, and a largely unprecedented one. Your baseball team has won the World Series 3 times in the last decade. Your football team is in the middle of a sustained run of excellence that has brought it multiple Super Bowl wins. Your hockey team won the Cup not that long ago, and is a serious contender to do so again. And while the Celtics are rebuilding this year, the Allen/Garnett/Pierce years were a cornucopia of victories. At this point of time, all of the available evidence would indeed seem to point to the notion that Boston is indeed a charmed place. That victories are your right and due. That the rest of the country is jealous of your success, and that every referee's hand is set against you.But.I have lived among you. I have been one of you. And I tell you this: It was not so long ago that the Red Sox were worried about losing Butch Hobson, and running Bob Zupcic out there in center field. That the greatest player in Patriots history was, for most of the franchise history, a left guard. That for ages, your basketball team was the province of Paul "Thanks Dad" Gaston, and dwelt in the dregs of the Atlantic Divison. That you wandered many years in the wilderness, and to the wilderness you will no doubt some day return. It happens to all teams; it happens to all cities. And when it happens to you, and you hear the chest-thumping of the Chicagoans or the Angelenos or Philadelphians or whoever, you will think on this moment, and remember.And then you can tell them to shut their pieholes because no one wants to hear it, the same way we all now want to tell you to shut yours.